I Question about 64 bit stuff...

I have a question, I goanna bay myself a now PC soon what I want to know, I’m familiar with pc’s but not up to date with AMD Athlon 64 bit processors
my question is if I bay a 64 bit processor and MB will all the normal apps and programs still work or not like winamp, pain shop pro, photoshop or can
you still run a 32 bit operating system on a 64 bit processor or not .

Or If I bay win XP 64 bit will all the apps and programs work on it or not I don’t want to bay a 64 bit processor if nothing is working on it jet.

I am un-familuar with the new 64 bit technology too, but here is my understanding of it (it could be completely wrong):

The following Operating Systems currently run on 64 bit processors: (List only includes populars)
MS Windows XP 64 bit
MS Windows 2003 Server
A number of Linux Operating Systems.

As for programs, I am un-familiar with Windows programs running on 64 bit processors - I won't get into the technical information about how programs
are compiled for 64 bit, but I know - under Linux, when you download a file - you usually have to make sure you download the 64 bit version. Windows
may be the same, but I expect - knowing Windows, it may have some sort of emulator in the 64 bit Operating Systems, so you can run 32bit programs.
This would seem logical.

Windows 2000 and Windows XP cannot run on 64bit processors. The only Operating Systems I know of that do, are like I said above:
Windows XP 64bit Edition,
Windows 2003 Server (Don't know if it is called 64bit Edition or not, but the information I got through from Microsoft says it runs on 64bit
processors and 32bit).

And then the Linux Operating Systems, but obviously you are focused on Windows, so we'll leave them alone.

You can run 32-bit Windows OS on the Athlon64 systems. Athlon64 is supposed to be completely backward compatible with 32-bit code. There are a number
of links I Google'd up that talk about it, including some performance comparisons. Here are a couple:

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